V12: Theories of Emotion

What is emotion? (General as a lot of definitons)

• Lasts seconds or minutes, not hours or days (short lasting)

• Not affective disorders or personality temperaments

• May be accompanied by facial expressions, physiological responses

• Occur in response to actions, people, thoughts

What are the five components of emotion

1. Subjective feelings

   • Difficult to test (ethically, predictably, take a while to come down from i.e. elicit extreme sadness then happiness)

2. Physiological response

   • e.g. heart racing

3. Expressive behaviour

   • e.g. smiling

   • Cultural difference in expression

4. Appraisal

   • Interpretation i.e. ‘this is bad’

5. Action tendencies

   • e.g. avoid something disgusting

What are the three main theories of emotion and what question do they look at

1. Evolutionary

   • What do emotions do for us?

2. Appraisal

   • Why do the same circumstances cause different emotions?

3. Psychological constructionist

   • Why is there huge variation in how emotions look and feel?

What framework can be used to compare the three theories of emotion (more if I’m writing essay)

• Antecedents of an emotion

  • What causes them

• Biological givens

  • Innate emotional capabilities

• The integration of emotional experience

  • How components of emotion fit together

Evolutionary approach (who it’s based from, how it’s observed, its main argument)

• Based on the writings of Darwin (1972)

• Observational approach

  • Humans and animals emotional expression

• Main argument

  • Argued for universality and functional adaptation (including communication)

    • i.e. they serve an adaptive (beneficial) function

Evolutionary: Antecedents (cause)

• Emotions come when we detect a threat to survival OR opportunity for reproduction

• Signal stimuli (environmental indicator)

  • Indicate an adaptive problem

  • i.e. a high cliff, a potential mate

• Emotion associate with action tendencies

  • Make someone ready to execute action like running when threatened

Who added to the evolution theory antecedents

Plutchik (1980)

• Theory of actions taken in response to adaptive problems, their associated emotions, and outcomes

• Outcome = Functional problem the emotion is solving (i.e. Protection, Reproduction, Exploration, etc.)

Evolutionary: Basic Emotions AND what makes an emotion ‘basic’?

• Small list emotions that are innate, quick, and automatically caused by signal stimuli

• What makes an emotion ‘basic’?

  • Universal expression

    • Not just facial i.e. rubbing someone’s arm when they are upset

  • Discrete physiology

    • Different physical pattern of response from respective emotions

  • Presence in other primates

  • Automatic evaluations of the environment

    • Not cognitive effortful

What criteria is mainly used to test ‘basic’ emotions

Universal expression AND discrete physiology

What are Ekman’s 6 basic emotions

• Anger

• Disgust

• Happiness

• Fear

• Sadness

• Surprise

What evidence did Ekman have for his 6 basic emotions and what were some limitations of it

• Those were recognised by secluded tribe in Papua New Guinea

• Limitations (methodological)

  • What is the criteria for something to be considered universal?

  • Is it truly universal or just similarities between the cultures

  • Emotions used are exaggerated, is recognition the same for spontaneous expression?

In what theory of emotions do some argue that basic emotions can combine to make other emotions

Evolutionary

Evolutionary study on physiological response of basic emotions (Discreet Physiology)

Ekman et al. (1990)

• Directed Facial Action Task

  • P’s asked to contract specific muscles in their face

• Allows emotional expression without specific reference to it

• Results

  • The basic emotions show different physiological response patterns

    • Anger, Fear, and Sadness associated with increased HR

    • Everything BUT Happiness and Surprise associated with increased skin conductance

• Replicated in Indonesian P’s not exposed to Western Culture (Levenson et al., 1992)

Physiological considerations other than skin conductance and HR of the six basic emotions in the evolutionary theory

• Anger

  • Increased blood flow to arms and hands

• Fear

  • Increased blood flow to legs and feet

• Happiness

  • Neurotransmitter release, dampening effects of negative emotions

• Disgust

  • Triggers gag reflex, restricts airflow to olfactory receptors

Evolutionary theory: Affect Programs (how the components of emotions come together)

• Affect Program

  • Integrated automatic emotional response that is built into our body through evolution

  • Like a pre-set response that tells the body what to do when faced with a particular event

  • Argues they are innate, but can change through individual experience and knowledge gain

What cause emotions (antecedants) under evolutionary theory

Signal stimuli

What are biological givens in evolutionary theory

Basic emotions (universal, discrete physiology, automatic)

How is emotional experience integrated in evolutionary theory

Affect programs (co-occurrence of emotional components)

Appraisal theories: Antecedents (causes)

• Very few stimuli cause the same emotion in everyone

• Emotions are determined by how an individual appraises their circumstances

• Appraisal

  • Mental process which allows detection and evaluation of stimuli and how they affect your well-being

Appraisals in appraisal theories

• Explain the variation in emotional life

• Determine the intensity and quality of components of emotion

• Are unconscious, but part of them can become conscious

Scherer’s (1984) five dimensions of appraisals

1. Novelty (how new the thing is)

2. Valence (positive or negative)

3. Goal relevance

4. Agency (control)

5. Norms (social norms)

Ecologically valid study in appraisal theory looking at antecedents

Scherer and Ceschi (1997)

• Interviewed people who had genuinely lost their luggage at the airport

• Asked how they felt before and after they visited the luggage desk

• Asked about appraisals non-directly

• Results

  • Variation in emotions experiencing the same objective event

  • Goal relevance best predicted emotions

Appraisal theories: Biological givens

• Scherer argues for a distinction between primary and secondary appraisals:

  • Primary = fast, clear-cut, innate

  • Secondary = higher-order, learned

  • i.e. Snake

    • Primary = dangerous!

    • Secondary = not poisonous

How did Scherer split his five components of appraisals into primary and secondary?

Primary

• Novelty

• Valence

Secondary

• Goal relevance

• Agency

• Norms

Appraisal theories: Integration of emotional experience

• All emotion components do not necessarily occur together

  • Reisenzien et al. (2013) found that emotions and expressions did NOT reliably co-occur

What causes (antecedent) emotions under appraisal theories

Specific appraisal patterns (can differ across people)

What are the biological givens emotions under appraisal theories

Valence and novelty appraisals

Integration of emotional experience (how components of emotion fit together) under appraisal theories

Components are independent (unlike evolutionary theory)

Psychological Constructionism: Antecedents

Barrett (2017)

• Emotions are not passive reactions, but actively constructed

• Emotions caused by applying learned categories to experience

• Categorisation

  • Mental process by which we take experience and give it meaning

• Can explain cross-cultural variations

• CONTEXT SPECIFIC

  • Same physiological profile can be attributed to vastly different things depending on context

Psychological Construtionism: Biological givens

Core Affect

• Composed of two dimensions

  1. Valence: Pleasant vs. Unpleasant

  2. Activation: Activated vs. Deactivated

• Thought innate BUT influenced by personal experience

• Can be a mood, emotion, symptom, body state, or an evaluation

Alexithymia

Difficulty naming emotions

Psychological Constructionism: Biological givens study

MacCormack and Lindquist (2019)

• P’s rated hunger, shown context image (negative or neutral), then asked to rate pleasantness of pictograph

• Results

  • With increasing hunger, increased unpleasantness ratings BUT only with negative context image

• Conclusion

  • Not hunger itself causing the negative evaluations, it’s the context

Psychological Constructionism: Integration of emotion

• Emotions don’t have fingerprints, each expression of anger in an individual will be different

• Emotions you experience are not inevitable consequences of your genes

  • HR changes inevitable, interpretation is not

What causes emotions in psychological constructionism theories

Categorisation of affect responses

What are the biological givens in psychological constructionism theories

Core Affect

What is the integration of emotional experience in psychological constructionism theories

Components are independent